Smoke

them and with Bradley.

But first Bradley by himself. In he came with his expensive attachй case, briskly shook hands, and surveyed their parlor with a critical eye. 'Haven't you anything less comfortable?'

David stared. 'Less comfortable?'

Peter said, 'This is where we talked with him last time.'

'It's obviously too small for four,' Bradley said, gazing around a room that could have — and often had — accommodated eight with no problem. 'What else do you have?'

'Well,' David said, dubiously, 'there's the conference room downstairs.'

'Oh? What's that like?'

'Very plain,' David told him. 'Comfortable chairs but, you know, officelike. TV and VCR and all that at one end, a long rectangular table.'

'Fluorescents in the ceiling,' Peter added. 'Nothing on the walls. When we eventually do make a public announcement about our work here, that's where we'll hold the press conference.'

'Sounds ideal,' Bradley said. 'Lead me to it.'

So, having brought him upstairs, they now brought him downstairs again, where Shanana the receptionist read her correspondence-school lessons and watched the street outside and answered the occasional phone call. Peter said to her, 'Shanana, when Mr. Leethe gets here, show him to the conference room, will you?'

She looked at him, alert and willing but uncertain. 'The conference room? Where's that?'

'The coffee room,' he explained, because the coffeemaker was kept in there.

'Oh.' She looked just as alert and just as willing, but even more uncertain. 'You're going to be in there?'

'Yes,' he said firmly, and went after David and Bradley, who'd already gone on into the . . . conference . . . coffee . . . press-announcement room.

In there, Bradley was looking about in happy satisfaction. 'This is perfect,' he said, and plopped his attachй case onto the table down at the far end, opposite the entrance, with the TV and VCR and the pull-down slide-show screen all behind him. 'You two both sit on my right here,' he directed, 'along this side. When Leethe arrives, he'll sit down there, with his back to the door. People always feel slightly uneasy with their backs to the door in an unknown room. Whether they're aware of the feeling or not, the unease is there.'

'Bradley,' David said, sitting nearest him, 'you're brilliant.'

It was clear that Bradley agreed with this assessment, but, 'We'll see,' he said, and opened his attachй case and brought out both his yellow legal pad and a manila folder. 'Sit down, Peter,' he said, since Peter was still standing, then Bradley sat down himself and said, 'Before Leethe gets here, let's define exactly what it is you two want.'

'We want our invisible man back,' Peter said.

'Unharmed,' David added.

'Without publicity,' Peter said.

'You also, I take it,' Bradley said, twiddling his Mont Blanc pen, 'want to retain your relationship with NAABOR.'

'I never thought we had a relationship with NAABOR,' David said.

Peter said, 'We're funded by the American Tobacco Research Institute.'

'A golem belonging to NAABOR,' Bradley pointed out, 'as their own annual stockholder statements are proud to claim.'

'We're not stockholders,' David said.

'You aren't totally unworldly either,' Bradley told him. 'You know who's financing you, and why. And the point is, you don't want to put that relationship at risk by whatever happens in connection with this current matter.'

'God, no,' David said. 'We don't want to lose our funding.'

'What we want, in fact,' Peter said, 'is everything. We want our invisible man, and we want our funding, and we want our privacy maintained until we are ready to go public.'

'The question is,' Bradley said, 'what in all that is negotiable, and to what extent—'

'None,' Peter said, and Shanana entered, saying, 'Mr. Leethe is here.'

Bradley offered her a big moonlike smile, and probably raised those invisible eyebrows of his. Getting to his feet, motioning for Peter and David to rise as well, he said, 'Thank you, dear. Show him in, please.'

She stepped back, and Leethe entered, carrying his own more battered but equally expensive attachй case. Peter and David stood where they were, like minor servers at some arcane Mass, while Bradley strode around the table, hand out, high-wattage smile agleam as he said, 'Ah, Mr. Leethe, at last we meet. Bradley Cummingford.'

Leethe took Bradley's hand as though it were part of the membership ritual for a club he wasn't sure he wanted to join. Then he lifted an eyebrow at the room, gazed at David and Peter, and said, 'Farewell to elegance, I see.'

'This seems more businesslike,' Peter said.

'It certainly does.'

Bradley gestured at the chair he wanted Leethe in. 'Do sit down, Mr. Leethe,' he said.

'Thank you.'

As Bradley returned to his own place at the head of the table, Leethe followed him partway and took a chair midway along the side, facing David and Peter, with the allegedly uneasy-making door down to his left. David and Peter both looked at Bradley, to see how he'd take this development, but Bradley didn't appear to have noticed it at all. Sitting down, picking up his pen, smiling again at Leethe, he said, 'It does seem to me we do have some goals in common here.'

'That's because we have the same clients,' Leethe said.

'Ah, if only that were so,' Bradley told him. 'In fact, our firm has done some work for NAABOR over the years, but on this matter, I'm sorry to say, we have not been retained.'

Gesturing at David and Peter, Leethe said, 'I meant the doctors here.'

'Oh, Mr. Leethe,' Bradley said. 'We aren't going over that stale ground, are we?'

'I suppose not,' Leethe agreed, and shrugged. 'I want my position clear, that's all.' Raising that eyebrow at David and Peter, lifting his hands from the table to gesture with upheld palms, like a slow-motion demonstration of pizza-tossing, he said, 'You want something. Something you couldn't discuss with me without the presence of your friend here.'

'We want our invisible man,' Peter said.

Leethe's smile could give you frostbite. 'We all want the invisible man,' he said.

'You're looking for him,' Peter pointed out. 'You have . . . people, looking for him.'

'Granted.'

'We want to be a part of it, when he's found.'

Bradley said, 'Well, no, Peter, that isn't exactly what you want.'

Peter looked at him in surprise. 'It isn't?'

'May I?'

'Go ahead.'

To Leethe, Bradley said, 'David and Peter here created that invisible man while employees of your client. To the extent that a human being may be property, therefore, he is the property of your client, or the discoveries and techniques he embodies are your client's property. However, legal practice, medical practice, scientific practice, all agree that while your client holds ultimate ownership, or whatever rights would take the place of ownership in this instance, David and Peter are the ultimate authorities as to when their creation is in a fit and proper condition to be turned over to your client. As of this point, since the experiment was altered by the experimental subject away from the original intentions of Peter and David, and since they have not as yet had the opportunity to examine the subject to see what other unforeseen effects may have been caused by this flawed experiment, they wish me to put NAABOR and the American Tobacco Research Institute on notice, through you, their agent, that the experiment must be considered at this point in time tentative and inconclusive and incomplete, and that David and Peter are thoroughly averse to turning over to your clients any experimental data, including but not limited to the invisible man himself, until they are satisfied with the results of their researches. It is only a